What Gig Economy Jobs Are Really Like

10 August 2018:

Experts often claim that the “gig economy” — a labor market characterized by the prevalence of short-term contracts or freelance work as opposed to permanent jobs — can be a positive for companies and for workers. It is often described as an evolved state of working in which a work-from-home employee is not tied down to one company or stuck with one kind of task or project.

At the same time, the argument goes, this new model lets companies throttle their workforces up and down depending on economic conditions and the demand for their products or services. Less talked about but also part of the decision to employ gig workers is the cost savings from not having to offer employee benefits.

As it turns out, however, the realities of the online gig economy are far from its perceived ideals. And that presents a problem for gig economy workers and for the businesses that employ them.

A new study from Oxford University, “Good Gig, Bad Gig: Autonomy and Algorithmic Control in the Global Gig Economy,” unearths some of the problems with gig-economy work, specifically for people registered via global remote work platforms, like Freelancer.com and Fiverr.

The people that the researchers both interviewed and surveyed generally perform jobs in the areas of research, translation, and programming, and live in South East Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.